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Black Lives Matter

The presumption of "Black Lives Matter" is that America's police are racist, target black people for no reason whatsoever, and wantonly inflict violence on innocent black people. There is no evidence to corroborate such a wild accusation.

America's police made literally 10 million arrests in 2019. Of those arrests, only a couple dozen involved questions of wrongful lethal force by white officers against blacks. In virtually every one of those cases, the police were fired upon first or the suspect threatened the police with lethal force. In other words, the claim that America's police are daily "murdering" black people is a bold lie.

Anyone who has worked in law enforcement (e.g., me) knows what's it's like to try to control someone who is violent and high. The police in the Floyd case made an error is using force, but it does not follow that error was "murder," or impelled by racism. Justice should be served to any officer using excessive force, but the movement to defund the police because they're a terror group is a cause that's beyond foolish and reckless.
>> "All lives matter" - All lives absolutely do matter, but to that we would like to offer this cartoon to demonstrate our thoughts here. www.instagram.com/p/CA9u4VABaK_/

To make myself very clear:

1. I fully support the notion that black lives matter, as do all human lives. (I do not however support the movement with the same name, thus the lowercase in "black lives matter").
2. I completely deplore and condemn the way police officer(s) handled the Floyd case.
3. I am looking forward to the justice system to take proper action against the actions that claimed the life of this man.
4. I advocate for more police training in general (incl. anti-biased and anti-racial training), which is so desperately needed today.

That being said, I feel compelled to make one important comment:

A chess website team has freedom of speech, like anyone else. But when you choose to engage with ONE human rights issue over so many similar others, this does turn the announcement into a political statement. And that is most unfortunate. :(
#29 The problem is that even inalienable rights, such as the right to peacefully protest, is becoming political. During the lockdown, which is still active in some States, the right to protest or to attend religious services has been denied to American citizens who just wanted to worship their God or earn a living. Chris Cuomo on CNN was calling "fools" young people who were just enjoying the sun in parks, in UK when you were going out the police told you "you're killing people", and white armed people who were peacefully protesting for their first amendment rights were called out for being "dangerous" or something on lamestream media.

And yet now Democrats seem to defend the BLM protests as if covid-19 was never a thing. The hypocrisy is off the charts.

Don't be fooled, this is highly political. It's the latest stage of Trump derangement syndrome.
Frankly, I think stapling the particular "Black Lives Matter" movement to the protests itself detracts from them and from the cause of justice. One doesn't need to ascribe to the particular mythology that BLM spreads to recognize that George Floyd's death was wrong and deserves justice, and that police reform (of some type) is necessary.
@Cynosure -- True. I was equally upset about the Greta Thunberg announcement at the time. Not about the issue itself, but about the "pick & choose" approach. At the time, I did not comment, but since the trend continues on Lichess, I felt compelled to state my opinion.
@Pashut all I'm saying is that it isn't picking and choosing, there's a clear pattern here of it being done in the past.

The website itself being FOSS is a political statement, is it not?
Lichess, are erasing and blocking comments on this subject!! You should be ashamed Lichess!!

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